Vleeptron's Revenge for newspapers which do not print Bob's letters

Letters to the Editor
The Rocky Mountain News
[Denver Colorado]

To the Editor:

There are really no depths to which the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the "Drug Czar") will not dive to stay in power forever, increase its political influence, and push its pathetic, toxic, racist agenda.

Publicly exhibiting a mother and father grieving over the suicide of their teenage son ("Drug Czar blasted over pot story," 13 May) is a typical carnival side-show stunt by this wholly unaccountable agency. But the Terri Schiavo circus showed every cockroach in the White House that grieving and distraught families make excellent political kerosene to burn down any and all reasoned dialogue over law and policy.

Teen use of marijuana is unhealthy and inappropriate -- just as America has accepted, since ending its War on Beer in 1933, that alcohol is an adults-only choice.

But the Czar's exploitation of Christopher Skaggs' grieving parents was meant to fuel the Czar's ill-hidden agenda of handcuffing marijuana, in any tiny quantity, for any conceivable purpose, by any age group, to a lifelong criminal record and -- particularly for African-Americans, Hispanics and Native-Americans -- jail and prison.

Republican Czar or Democratic Czar, Clinton Czar or Bush Czar, the bipartisan achievement of the 30-year-old War on Drugs has turned the Land of the Free into the world's largest prison system. We have more prisoners than China, more prisoners than Russia, and the most powerful cog of this shameful machine is the War on Drugs.

Every consumer has learned from bitter experience to listen to scam artists with a skeptical grain of salt. Though this particular used-car lot sells its lemons and deathtraps from a White House address, the Czar's despicable recycling of the Skaggs' family tragedy deserves exactly the same scrutiny.

What do the Czar and his sleazeball underlings really want?

In what corners of private industry will ONDCP officials work after they leave the Czar's office, and how much more than their federal salaries will they earn off the War Without End which they shaped, waged and perpetuated? (For a web surfer or journalist, this is an easy one to research.)

And the most important question every citizen should ask: Does the Czar really give half a damn about "our precious children"? Or has the ONDCP always used our children as political hostages?

How many times a year do the Czar and his flunky scoundrels tell the American people, in barely disguised code: Do what we demand, pony up more tax money, give us more power, increase prison sentences, add dozens of new crimes, ignore all calls for sanity and reform -- or we'll kill this adorable little child?

Robert Merkin

Northampton MA